


if you had to live with this you'd rather lie than fall

by procrastinatingbookworm



Series: Hello, I'm good for nothing - will you love me just the same? [7]
Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Depression, Dissociation, Hope vs. Despair, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Suicidal Thoughts, another short one whoops, apparently this series is no longer canon-adjacent, internal monologue of a character having a crisis, quirrel has a deeply bad time, thanks to me getting Sad About Moths, think of it as a transitional piece
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:27:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27018775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/procrastinatingbookworm/pseuds/procrastinatingbookworm
Summary: Quirrel struggles to cope with the truth.
Relationships: Quirrel/Tiso (Hollow Knight)
Series: Hello, I'm good for nothing - will you love me just the same? [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1957039
Comments: 8
Kudos: 80





	if you had to live with this you'd rather lie than fall

Quirrel… drifts.

He watches Tiso with impassive eyes, like the Pale King in his palace, watching the world he wrought crumble under the furious cries of the God-Queen he deposed, as she takes back the people he took from her.

Like the King in his palace, like his Madame in her acid tank, half-submerged, eyes impassive as Quirrel took the mask from her face.

Like the little knight, sitting beside Quirrel at Blue Lake, expressionless despite the exhausted slump of their body, holding tight to Quirrel’s hand.

Quirrel wishes he’d been patient enough to wait for them to leave, that he hadn’t let them drag him back from the end of his story. All his years of stubbornness, and he’d caved when it was most important.

One moment of weakness, and he’s squandered his peace. He’ll never have that moment back, that unburdened sense of accomplishment, the blissful freedom of a required task completed.

Tiso is crying, head turned away as though in shame, and Quirrel… Quirrel remembers.

_ “Come, Quirrel, walk with me a moment,” Monomon says, and who is he to deny her? She is his Madame, his Teacher. He goes to her, as he has always gone to her. “There have been rumors afloat, my student. Have you heard them?” _

_ Afloat, like Uumuu beneath the acid, waiting for an intruder that may never come. May come tomorrow, may already be among them. _

_ “Many of them, Madame, though the truth in them is something I cannot be certain of.” _

_ So she tells him what is true: she tells him she will be gone soon. _

_ She tells him it is necessary. For the good of Hallownest. _

_ She gives him a nail and a duty. She gives him her mask to keep him safe and sends him to be cleansed of grief by the winds. _

_ (The grief is never gone. The memories strip away layer by layer, until Quirrel has only his nail and his name, but when he breathes he feels mourning like a stone in his throat.) _

Tiso is holding Quirrel’s hand. He hasn’t stopped. He’s stopped crying, but he’s still holding Quirrel’s hand, like it’s the one real thing left.

Quirrel isn’t real. He’s a promise made to a lie made in service of a massacre. He’s even less real now, fractured memories and a false mask and a nail gone uncleaned because there’s just so much to kill.

All for nothing.

All for a lie.

All for a series of lies.

Tiso is holding Quirrel’s hand, saying something to him that Quirrel can’t hear over the noise in his head.

“We need to tell them,” Quirrel says, in a voice much calmer than he feels. “We need to—”

Tiso nods. He looks strange, in the gold light. Foreign, weary, grief-stricken.

Somehow, they stand. Somehow, they leave the cavern behind. Somehow, Quirrel picks up his nail and his pack, somehow Tiso hefts his shield onto his shoulder. Somehow they leave Greenpath unscathed. 

Quirrel doesn’t remember raising his nail, but he’s sure he must have. He always has to.

Quirrel drifts. Beside him, Tiso trembles with every step, but keeps moving. He speaks, occasionally, but Quirrel doesn’t hear any words he understands.

They don’t take the Stagway. They just walk, hand in hand, through Greenpath, through the Crossroads gone bloated with Infection, nearly aimless, nearly wandering, blinded by realization.

It’s only luck that the wandering knight runs past them, stops, and doubles back, head tilted in questioning-confusion-concern.

Quirrel doesn’t listen to Tiso explain it. He doesn’t watch the little knight realize what they’re complicit in.

He breathes slowly and holds Tiso’s hand and doesn’t hear anything but the inside of his mind until Tiso says, in a voice that Quirrel recognizes as a dying bug’s last breath of air:

“What are we going to do?”

Quirrel looks at him, looks at the knight. Looks up at the ceiling, webbed over with veins like a living thing.

What  _ are _ they going to do?


End file.
